Alec Craig Movies

This second entry in RKO Radio's "Falcon" series begins with Gay Lawrence (George Sanders), aka the Falcon, promising to give up his private-eye activities for the sake of fiancee Helen Reed (Wendy Barrie). This resolves lasts for about eight minutes, whereupon Lawrence tackles the case of a missing scientist named Waldo Sampson (Alec Craig), the inventor of a synthetic-diamond process. Kidnapped by Sampson's abductors, Lawrence manages to escape, only to be kidnapped again and later accused of murder. The resolution of the plot hinges on the old mistaken-identity device (one of the principal characters has an identical twin, and that's all that can be said without giving the game away). Carryovers from the first "Falcon" film include Allen Jenkins as Lawrence's dimwitted sidekick Goldie and character actor Hans Conried, here cast as a snotty hotel night clerk. A Date with the Falcon was unofficially remade as The Falcon's Adventure, the final entry in the RKO series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One-time movie song-and-dance man James Dunn won an Academy Award for his "comeback" performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Based on the best-selling novel by Betty Smith, the film relates the trials and tribulations of a turn-of-the-century Brooklyn tenement family. The father, Dunn, is a likable but irresponsible alcoholic whose dreams of improving his family's lot are invariably doomed to disappointment. The mother, Dorothy McGuire, is the true head of the household, steadfastly holding the family together no matter what crisis arises. The story is told from the point of view of daughter Peggy Ann Garner, a clear-eyed realist who nonetheless would like to believe in her pie-in-the-sky father, whom she dearly loves. Joan Blondell co-stars as the family's brash, freewheeling aunt, whose means of financial support is a never-ending source of neighborhood gossip. This first film directorial effort of Elia Kazan earned a special Oscar for "Most Promising Juvenile Performer" Peggy Ann Garner. A Tree Grows From Brooklyn was remade for TV in 1974, and also served as the basis of a Broadway musical. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Action in the North Atlantic is solid wartime propaganda with a rather endearing inner lining of left-wing politics, courtesy (no doubt) of scenarist John Howard Lawson, who based his screenplay on a novel by maritime specialist Guy Gilpatric. While running war goods to America's Russian allies, a merchant marine ship captained by Raymond Massey is torpedoed. The courage of Massey and his first mate Humphrey Bogart serves as an inspiration to the survivors, who manage to navigate their tiny lifeboat to America, where they are lauded as heroes. After only the briefest of compassionate leaves (Massey is reunited with wife Ruth Gordon, while Bogart strikes up a relationship with Julie Bishop), the crew is assigned a new Liberty Ship. Despite fears of being torpedoed again, Massey, Bogart, and the other men successfully bring their cargo to Russia, shooting down several German planes in the process. As the Americans are cheered on by the smiling, well-fed Russian seamen and peasants, Action in the North Atlantic fades out, with the voice of Franklin D. Roosevelt (actually radio announcer Art Gilmore) heard on the soundtrack encouraging a "United Nations" allegiance against the axis. The supporting cast of Action in the North Atlantic includes a young newcomer by the name of Bernard Zanville, whose billing was changed to "Dane Clark" upon the film's release. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This wartime melodrama stars George Sanders as Keith Wilson, a disillusioned Britisher who becomes a "Lord Haw Haw"type at a Nazi radio station. All the time he's dispensing anti-British propaganda over the airwaves, however, Wilson is actually a secret agent in the employ of the His Majesty's government. It is Wilson's intention to use his intimate relationship with the Germans to expose a worldwide Nazi spy ring. Romance enter the picture in the form of Ilse Preissing (Marguerite Chapman), the sister of a Nazi agent whose decision to join Wilson's side results in her death. Veteran movie villainess Gale Sondergaard also appears in the film, cast against type as a courageous British intelligence agent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this high-spirited musical comedy, J. Newport Bates (Eddie Bracken) is a millionaire who finds women are only interested in him for his money. When he becomes infatuated with Teddy Collins (Veronica Lake), a cigarette girl, he tries to hide his true identity from her, hoping she'll be interested in him for himself rather than his bank account. However, once Teddy figures out who he is, Bates drops her, and he is about to give up on women entirely when he meets Sue Thomas (Marjorie Reynolds), a nice girl who isn't interested in his money (or at least not yet). Musical satirists Spike Jones and his City Slickers also appear, though most prints are missing a bit from one of their musical numbers: a verse from a song that made fun of Eleanor Roosevelt was clipped after the film's initial engagements. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The career girl in this PRC musical is Joan (Frances Langford), a Kansas City gal with showbiz aspirations. She heads to New York, where she sets up residence in a theatrical boarding house straight out of Stage Door. A few setbacks later, Joan lands the lead in a Broadway musical revue, which despite its threadbare production values (a PRC trademark) bids fair to be the hit of the season. Endearingly old-fashioned, Career Girl puts over its clichés with energy and verve. Besides, any picture with wisecracking Iris Adrian in a large role can't be all bad. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having proven their box-office value in such films as A Letter of Introduction, Goldwyn Follies and You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his wise-lipped dummy Charlie McCarthy were awarded with a starring vehicle of their own. While entertaining at the home of magazine publisher Court Aldrich (Samuel S. Hinds), Bergen and his "friends" Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd get mixed up in their host's murder. It seems that Aldrich was working hand in glove with gangster Tony Garcia (Harold Huber), who has kept himself busy knocking off the publisher's enemies. Could Garcia be the murderer this time as well, or was it someone else at the party? Inspector Dailey (Edgar Kennedy) wants to find out-but he doesn't want the unsolicited assistance of Charlie McCarthy, who insists upon playing Sherlock Holmes, replete with deerstalker and magnifying glass. Though essentially a "stunt" film, Charlie McCarthy, Detective pleases the crowd with an abundance of hilarious dialogue and a reasonably good mystery subplot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Everything clicks in this tuneful, colorful and profitable Betty Grable musical. The star plays Katie Farley, a gyrating saloon entertainer in turn-of-the-century New York. Convinced that Katie is destined for Bigger Things, Coney Island impresario Eddie Johnson (George Montgomery) tries to turn the raucous song-and-dance girl into a refined entertainer, at one point handcuffing her wrists and ankles so she'll be forced to rely on her voice rather than her undulations. Sure enough, Katie becomes a high-class Broadway star under the aegis of showman Willie Hammerstein (Matt Briggs) -- and equally sure enough, she and Eddie grow apart. After a desultory romance with Eddie's rival, slick saloon owner Joe Rocco (Cesar Romero), Katie eventually returns to the arms of the man she truly loves, as comedy relief Frankie (Phil Silvers) looks on in myopic glee. Among the musical highlights of Coney Island is Betty's delightful rendition of the old chestnut "Cuddle Up a Little Closer". The film was remade, again with Grable, as Wabash Avenue (1950). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This back-stage crime comedy, a remake of Lights Out (1923), takes a healthy satirical stab at the powerful studio system of the times. The trouble begins when an ex-convict and a screenwriter together write a screenplay based on the bank robbery that got the criminal in trouble with the law. After the film's release, the police, following the clues set forth on screen, capture the ex-con's former partners who escaped before. When other mobsters see the film and hear the story, they fear that such films will become the rage and they could go to jail, so they launch an all-out assault on a Hollywood studio creating all sorts of behind-the-scenes mayhem. Ironically, soon after Crashing Hollywood was released, a hit man for the Bugsy Siegel-Meyer Lansky Mob in New York spotted an extra who turned out to be former mobster "Big Harry" Greenberg, who snitched on his bosses and then disappeared. The hit man informed his superiors and soon afterward, Greenberg was slain. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

It's Double Danger for detective-story writer Robert Crane (Preston Foster) whenever he pursues his "secret life" as a suave jewel thief. Eluding police commissioner David Theron (Samuel S. Hinds) at every turn, Crane intends to snatch the famed Konjer diamonds from under the nose of jeweler Gordon Ainsley (Donald Meek). Things take a sinister turn when a humorless professional crook (Paul Guilfoyle) tries to cut himself in for a piece of the action. RKO Radio starlet Whitney Bourne delivers perhaps her best performance as giddy female thief Carolyn Morgan. Had Preston S. Foster been so inclined, RKO could have built a profitable series around the adventures of devil-may-care Robert Crane. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old manor house in London, built in 1804 by a British admiral (C. Aubrey Smith) and blitzed in 1940 by one Adolf Hitler. Through the portals of this house pass a vast array of Britons, from high-born to low. The earliest scenes involve gay blade Lt. William Trimble (Ray Milland), wronged country-girl Susan (Anna Neagle), and wicked landowner Ambrose Pomfret (Claude Rains). We move on to a comic interlude involving dotty Mr. Simpson (Reginald Owen), eternally drunken butler Bellamy (Charles Laughton), and cockney plumbers Mr. Dabb (Cedric Hardwicke) and Wilkins (Buster Keaton). Maidservant Jenny (Ida Lupino) takes over the plot during the Boer War era, while the World War I sequence finds the house converted into a way-station for soldiers (including Robert Cummings) and anxious families (including Roland Young and Gladys Cooper). Finally we arrive in 1940, with American Gates Pomfret (Kent Smith) and lady-of-the-house Lesley Trimble (Ruth Warrick) surveying the bombed-out manor, and exulting over the fact that the portrait of the home's founder, Adm. Eustace Trimble (Smith), has remained intact -- symbolic proof of England's durability in its darkest hours. The huge cast includes Dame May Whitty, Edward Everett Horton, Wendy Barrie, Merle Oberon, Nigel Bruce, Richard Haydn, Donald Crisp, and a host of others -- some appearing in sizeable roles, others (like Arthur Treacher and Patric Knowles) willingly accepting one-scene bits, simply to participate in the undertaking. Seven directors and 21 writers were also swept up in the project. Forever and a Day was supposed to have been withdrawn from circulation after the war and its prints destroyed so that no one could profit from what was supposed to have been an act of industry charity. Happily for future generations, prints have survived and are now safely preserved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Colonel Breckinridge Marshall (Walter Catlett) of Clearwater, GA -- who puts on a big front but is actually only a step away from the poor house -- rents a luxurious townhouse in Manhattan in anticipation of the Carnegie Hall debut of his two daughters, singer Melinda (Gloria Jean) and pianist/singer Susannah (Martha O'Driscoll). But on their first night there, they hear strange noises and other disturbances, including the sound of someone tap-dancing -- Susannah runs for help to the next building, which turns out to be a nightclub where Olsen (Ole Olsen) and Johnson (Chic Johnson) are working, and finds herself in the middle of one of their "nut humor" Hellzapoppin'-style sketches. The two comics try to make amends by helping her out and find themselves up to their neck in strange warnings ("First is worst"), noises, and bizarre, ghostly apparations seemingly from nowhere, and alleged ghostly goings on. They eventually figure out that the house once belonged to one Wilbur Duffington, a wealthy ne'er-do-well out of New York's "gilded age" whose main hobbies were tap-dancing and drinking plum brandy, before he fell from a third-story window in the year 1900 at a party he was throwing. The boys reason that Wilbur, if he is there, might want to finish the party he was having the night he died; when that doesn't work, they reason out that he had to be a real square because he died in 1900, and so they bring in a swing band and a bunch of jitterbug dancers to drive him out -- that seems to do the trick, the ghost seemingly departing. But then the noises continue and the Marshalls are at their wits' end, until Olsen and Johnson accidentally discover far more sinister goings on, involving a band of criminals who have already committed one murder, something in that house worth killing for, and a plan to eliminate the Marshall family. Before it's over, a pitched battle ensues between the heroes and a band of costumed thugs (including a pair of ill-tempered dwarves), and a race against time to get the Marshall girls to a performance on time to save their careers, plus the unmasking of the man behind all of the mayhem, all intermixed with lots of Olsen and Johnson's patented nut-humor and the presence of a pre-Sky King Kirby Grant leading a band, singing, and playing a violin. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Filmed with the full cooperation of the Golden Gloves Tournament Association, this Paramount programmer stars Richard Denning as promising pugilist Bill Crane. Though tempted to sign up with crooked Joe Taggerty (J. Carrol Naish) for a series of fixed bouts, Crane is saved from himself by sportswriter Wally Matson (Robert Paige), the organizer of the local Golden Gloves program. Taggerty tries to get even by pitting the amateur Crane against a seasoned professional, but to no avail. James Cagney's sister Jeanne Cagney is an appealing heroine, while Crane's duplicitious ring opponent is played by Robert Ryan in his first screen appearance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide